Square Feet; Of Time and Tide, and Preservation Battles

By ELIZABETH ABBOTT

Published: January 11, 2006

For more than a year, preservationists fought to save the Ocean House hotel from demolition, citing its historical significance as one of the last wooden Victorian-era hotels on Rhode Island's coast.

Situated in the Watch Hill National Register Historic District, an exclusive enclave of shingle-style homes, the Ocean House recalled Watch Hill's illustrious past as a summer resort for the well-to-do, a quiet community where houses were passed down from generation to generation and outsiders with new money were few and far between.

But the past, it appears, cannot always be saved.

After buying the Ocean House last year, Bluff Avenue, a partnership headed by a Wall Street investment adviser, Charles M. Royce, decided that the rambling yellow hotel, built in 1868, was too decrepit to be restored. Demolition crews using a giant claw began to tear down the building late in December, upsetting even those who agreed with the developers that the building should come down.

''It was painful,'' recalled Paula Ruisi, a Watch Hill native who watched the claw attack the hotel's kitchen on a cold clear day just before Christmas. ''People wanted to save that building.''

Bluff Avenue has pledged to replicate the Ocean House in the same location; that effort, to start late this year, is to cost $60 million. The hotel, with 45 to 50 rooms, is to resemble the old Ocean House in its architectural detail and contain many items that were salvaged before demolition began.

Among the items destined for a second life are the hotel's front door and its large wooden reception desk. The new hotel, like the original, is also to have a columned porch and be painted yellow. (The hotel had been painted white just before the demolition in order to control the dust from old lead paint.)

''When you walk in, it's going to look and feel like the old hotel,'' said Meg Lyons, an architect with Centerbrook Architects of Essex, Conn., the firm designing the new hotel.

The project also includes 15 to 20 condominiums, which the developers say are necessary to make the hotel economically worthwhile. Condos aside, preservationists say replicating a building is not the same thing as saving one.

''A replica is a new building, not an old building,'' said Edward F. Sanderson, executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, a state agency that had worked with residents and Westerly town officials to save the Ocean House.

Mr. Sanderson said he did not disagree that the old hotel was too deteriorated to restore. A report commissioned by the developers found that the hotel's basic support of wooden trusses had been severely compromised over the years by the addition of plumbing, electricity and other modern amenities. Still, he said, ''the idea of a replica did not and still does not sit particularly well with the preservation community.''

A summer resident of Watch Hill for the last 15 years or so, Mr. Royce became involved with plans for the Ocean House in spring 2004. At that time, a developer in Connecticut was planning to raze the hotel and build five luxury homes in its place. Alarmed residents and preservationists began a ''Save the Ocean House'' campaign.

That developer, Girouard Associates of New Canaan, would have been allowed to build houses on the site, since the property is in a residential neighborhood and zoned for residential use. The site is approximately 11 and a half acres and slopes gently down to a scenic ocean beach.

But the preservationists believed strongly that a hotel was more in keeping with the historic use of the site. They also feared that the new houses would be too large for the genteel historic district and that they would block the public's access and view to the ocean.

For years, Watch Hill had been a quiet community where everyone knew everyone else, Ms. Ruisi said. But in recent years, it has been discovered by wealthy out-of-towners eager to build big homes -- too large in her view. ''Watch Hill is all about scale,'' she said. ''It's all about sensibilities.''

If the Ocean House was to give way to large single-family homes, it could set an unwanted precedent for the future, she said.

To many people, Mr. Royce, president of the Royce Funds, appeared on the scene like a white knight. Not only did he rescue the hotel, by buying it from Girouard for $11.5 million, but he also said he would restore the Ocean House or replicate it if the building was beyond repair.

This pledge was formalized in a zoning amendment that Mr. Royce helped to create; it specified in great detail the architectural elements he was required to replicate. The amendment also required Mr. Royce to work with state preservationists on the design and to reimburse the town for hiring three preservationists to review his plans.

The zoning amendment, adopted unanimously by the Westerly Town Council in November 2004, created a historic oceanfront hotel district that overlays the residential one. This means Mr. Royce can still build houses on the site if he chooses. But, reached recently in Florida, Mr. Royce said he was committed to building the replica. ''I'm not going to build houses on my watch,'' he said.

It was not his first foray into Watch Hill preservation. About eight years ago, when a housing development was proposed for the historic Avondale Farm, Mr. Royce bought the property and has since set aside much of it as a preserve.

He said his preference would have been to renovate the Ocean House, but experts told him it probably could not be done. An inspection commissioned by Bluff Avenue found sagging ceilings, drooping floors, a crumbling foundation, sinking columns and severely damaged trusses, among other problems.

''The work envisioned is quite nearly impossible to achieve, and even were it achievable it would leave little left of the original building and its finish,'' the report stated.

The original hotel was built to accommodate a growing leisure class freed from the constraints of the Civil War and flush with industrial wealth. Like Newport, R.I., Watch Hill became a popular summer resort in the second half of the 19th century. At one time, it had seven large hotels, but only the Ocean House escaped the fires and hurricanes that destroyed the others.

In recent years, the Ocean House could rent out only 59 of its 154 rooms because of its dilapidated condition. It closed in 2003 after it could no longer meet the state's fire code. In March 2004, the heirs of Louis D. Miller sold it to Girouard for approximately $13.2 million.

Before demolition, the developers saved everything deemed historically significant and planned to reuse it in the new hotel or to reproduce it. The less important items, like appliances, lamps and rugs, were auctioned off, with some of the proceeds going to a nonprofit organization that supports drug recovery programs, a cause of Mr. Royce's.

He also has evident feelings for the faded building he had to tear down. ''It just broke my heart that it was going to be turned into McMansions,'' he said.

Photo: The demolition of the Ocean House hotel, which dates from 1868, began just before Christmas in Westerly, R.I. Residents of the town resisted one proposal that called for large single-family homes on the site, and welcomed a bid to build a new hotel echoing the old, with some original details. (Photo by Robert Spencer for The New York Times)